Category Archives: Blog

Are you looking for some fashion ideas under $100 to rock on Mother’s Day? Well, The Moms gave us a little help with finding the most comfortable, yet affordable look for Mother’s Day during their WPIX 11 segment. I got to wear one of those great looks under $100. I was featured in the Mint Floral Fit & Flare dress by Maggy London. The perfect dress for brunch, date night, tea, PTA, but most of all Mother’s Day… It can be yours today for only $98.

At a time when rising costs have made travel to Cuba unaffordable for many Americans, MBGreeen Arts Curating and Global Arts/Media is pleased to offer Artists2Cuba, a low-cost “thrills but no frills” research and professional development program for U.S. artists and arts professionals. Visual, performing and literary artists, arts and museum educators, community arts managers and other arts professionals are invited to participate.

Artists2Cuba is an intensive, full-immersion program – the best way to experience the real Cuba. In small groups of 8 – 10, we’ll stay in clean but modest bed & breakfast residences, enjoy inexpensive but delicious meals in local paladares, and experience the art, music, history and monumental charms of Havana.
Program participants will have access to MBGreen Arts Curating and Global Arts’ extensive network of artists and cultural leaders, educators and social scientists.

Adero Media’s president Adero-Zaire Green partnered with client Crown Heights Youth Collective and The 71st Precinct on Christmas day to spread joy throughout the Pediatric division of Kings County Hospital. Smiles were received from the children as Santa from the 71st Precinct and Richard E. Green, Chief Executive of Crown Heights Youth Collective gave them hope and courage to get well and enjoy the Holiday season. This tradition has been going on for over 20 years, and will continue for years to come.

We are excited to announce that FINDING FELA is now in VOD! Go to findingfela.com to get the links to iTunes, Vimeo, Vudi, Amazon, and Google Play.

“Finding Fela has the makings of a classic music biopic: as thorough and soulful as Kevin Macdonald’s Marley, thrilling as Scorsese’s The Last Waltz all those years ago, or more recently Morgan Neville’s euphoric 20 Feet From Stardom, but follows an irresistible character in the same way Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching For Sugar Man did.”

The Brooklynettes Dancers Joined by Talu Green

The Pretty Brown Girl Movement

Just two years ago, Sheri Crawley decided to ask God what her purpose was, and where she should begin. After retiring from the corporate world, Crawley wanted to use her business knowledge for a purpose-driven venture. Soon, her questions would be answered with the Pretty Brown Girl Movement, an organization focused on the empowerment of little brown girls all over the world by reminding them they are beautiful, inside and out, through workshops and mentoring panels. Little did Crawley know, this idea that popped into her head during a conversation with her husband and daughter, would launch into a life changing movement for little brown girls in the world.

Sheri Crowley: For some reason “brown” is an easier term for all of us to embrace because we are so many different shades. Kids understand “brown” because it’s a color. It’s a different feeling, and there’s so many of us of different ethnicities that fall under “brown.” We all have our individual things we’re going through relating to skin tone. But we haven’t had a platform specifically designated for the discussion as it relates to skin tone and self-esteem with little “brown” girls.

EBONY:I love that you say “brown” isn’t exclusive to Black women, because it isn’t. Women of all cultures really do battle with complexion issues. But I think that color complexion with Black women is more in the forefront.

SC: Yes, I mean it’s all of us [of ethnic decent]. An Indian young lady who was your age approached me, and she was making a documentary calledShadism. I was just floored by the fact that the Indian culture also has a color issue. From how to “pass,” to face creams, to the commercials they run on television. They battle this too. Here we might be the minority, but globally? Not at all.

EBONY: Can you tell our readers the journey that led you to the Pretty Brown Girl Movement?

SC: It’s an interesting story. Our initial goal was just to empower our own daughters, so we created Leila, our Pretty Brown Girl doll, named after one of our daughters. We saw our daughter going through situations at school in regard to her skin tone after we moved from Chicago to a suburb of Detroit, where the population is only 1% African-American. So she went from living in downtown, diverse Chicago and always having African-Americans in her class to being less connected to kids of color. I could see her self-esteem start to dwindle almost instantaneously.

I remember I was taking out a group of girls for one of my daughter’s birthday parties to American Girl Place, and they all had a chance to pick their dolls off the wall, and every single one of them picked a White doll.

EBONY: Do you think those little girls hadn’t been taught enough that they are beautiful?

SC: They learned about their history. They knew about Harriet Tubman, they knew Rosa Parks; they know their stories. We taught them their history, and we did everything as parents that we think we could do. But still, when asked to choose on their own, they all chose the White doll. I was standing there like, “What’s wrong with the pretty brown girl doll?”

That summer, Anderson Cooper was running the doll test documentary, showing the five part series of the test that was originally done in 1942. The test went something like this: “Which one is the ugly one?” “Black.” “Which one is the pretty one?” “White.” “Which one is the smart one?” “White.” “Which one is the dumb one?” “Black.” And then, “Which one looks like you?” And hesitantly having to go back to all those things you said about it. I was crying so hard.

At the same time in my life, I was praying for God to show me my purpose. I retired from corporate America when I was 27. I’ve been an entrepreneur for years and had my own businesses and I wanted to know how I could really use my gifts and talents and skills to really impact others.

EBONY: Where did you come up with the name Pretty Brown Girl?

SC: My husband always calls our daughters “pretty brown girls.” That’s just what he calls them, how he greets them. In one of our conversations, it just clicked. I was just like: Pretty Brown Girl! I ran to the computer and looked up the domain to see if it was available. I couldn’t believe it was. We were appalled that it wasn’t taken. My husband said I should buy it. For the first time, I listened to him and the next day, someone tried to buy it from me! So we formed an LLC and created the Pretty Brown Girl doll.

When was the last time you saw a Broadway hit in Detroit with the original lead? Maybe Carol Channing in “Hello Dolly?” This time around, The Music Hall has scored a coup: not only the marvelous Broadway/London show, but the star of those productions, Sahr Ngaujah.

“Fela!” celebrates the life of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a Nigerian activist and musical innovator. In the performance of the gifted Ngaujah, he is immortalized for those of us who are, now, aware of AfroBeat, which he popularized, some might say, memorialized, in the 1970s.

The show takes place in Fela’s night club in Lagos, Nigeria, the Africa Shrine Nightclub, where Ngaujah takes center stage for most of the two hour running time. He sings, dances, plays trumpet and saxophone and, in the second act, shirtless, shows the impeccable pecs and upper arms of a modern day Greek god.

He is, unto himself, a legend, and if Fela was half as dynamic, he is well represented. (Fela last played Detroit in 1991; he died in 1997.)

Set in 1970, the show, co-written with panache by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones, moves into the past to show some of the experiences that affected Fela: He was an activist, writing songs that skewered corrupt generals and their governments, that held the colonialists and neo-colonialists’ feet to the lyrical fire, setting aflame radicalism in its listeners.

This show, then, is a celebration, not only of one man’s starry life, but of his courage in facing oppression in his country and dragging AfroBeat music to the world and into world music. His mother’s death was the result of his outspoken songs, and at the end of Act II, a brilliant scene distills the events of the raid on his enclave by goons in Army uniform and the graphic deaths of some of his followers – at times drawing gasps from the audience.

This was the event, some four years before the time of the show’s setting, when Funmilayo, Fela’s mother, was thrown from a second floor window to her death.

One of the small miracles of Bill T. Jone’s direction is how he keeps the show on an entertainment track, not letting it get preachy, but still making the point about heroes of the black movement, in Africa and here, in our country. Jones, himself an innovative choreographer with a social viewpoint, made a wise decision in choreographing (with associate, Maija Garcia.)

This show could exist as a dance work, with the sensational torque of hip and torso and the intricate footwork in opposition to swaying bodies. AfroBeat inspires dance, as it is a blend of African music, elements of jazz and funk, and features chants, call-and-response and complex rhythms.

But, wait, there is more.

The set is wondrous, the lighting outranks any rainbow you will see, and the generous use of projections on scrims outside of the proscenium and along the upper half of the rear wall carry the audience into the presentation (as do the spotlights sometimes shining into the crowd.) The magicians who accomplished this are Marina Draghici, Robert Wierzel and Peter Nigrini, with a fine sound design by Robert Kaplowitz. (In 2010, the show took three Tonys for choreography, costume and sound, and was nominated for a total of 11.)

In the supporting cast, the wondrous Melanie Marshall – also from the original cast – sings Funmilayo. Marshall’s voice is heavenly, reaching up and up in her second act song set on the stairway to heaven.

Other performers of note are Paulette Ivory (a sensuous Sandra), the outstanding Ismael Kouyate as the character of the same name, Gelan Lambert as the Tap Dancer and Egungun, and Rasaan-Elijah “Talu” Green as Iljembe-‘Mustafa.’ The ensemble is sensational, and the 10-piece band that plays upstage produces some extraordinary music.

The songs are forceful, direct, rhythmic, mostly by Fela himself. My one reservation is that only some of the song lyrics are projected onto the rear scrim, and with their polyglot lyrics are hard to understand.

One thing that is not hard to understand: why we should honor this man and thank conceivers Bill T. Jones, Jim Lewis and Stephen Hendel as the driving forces that brought this show and the history of AfroBeat to the stage with the help of Shawn “Jay Z” Carter, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and Ruth and Stephen Hendel who produced.

SHOW DETAILS: “Fela!” continues at Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, 350 Madison St., Detroit, Tuesday-Friday through March 4. Tickets: $30-100. For information: 313-887-8501 or www.musichall.org.